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Question about prednisone taper

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Posted 5/5/2009 2:59 AM (GMT 0)
After the hospital and remicade treatment I was to start tapering down from 40mg of pred. The dr wanted to do 5mg a week and I pushed for 10mg a week. He said I
could go down to 30 for a week, then 20, and then 15, 10, 5. I'm on 20 and doing fine and wondering if I can just go to 10 and then 0. (3 more weeks).

Has anyone done it this way?
Posted 5/5/2009 6:19 AM (GMT 0)
Hey Shellie

I would suggest that you go as per your doctor's advice. It is always better to taper by 5mg per week. In the last week, you can make it either 2.5mg or 5 mg on alternate days. I used to have 40-35-30-25-20-15-10-5-2.5. This was suggested by my GI, who was Head of Gastro in a leading hospital.
Posted 5/5/2009 2:08 PM (GMT 0)
I went from 20 mg to 10 mg really fast because of adverse reaction. Now I am on 10 mg/ day. They told me that when he wants me off of it that I will go down to 5 mg and then 2.5 mg each for a week.
Posted 5/5/2009 3:16 PM (GMT 0)
Well, a lot of people disagree with how my doc had me do my course of pred, but I did 40mg, 30mg, 20mg, 15mg for five days each, then 10mg for a little over a week (because I was waiting for my appointment to talk about what to do next), then 10mg every other day for two weeks (to get through my interview), then quit.
Posted 5/5/2009 6:19 PM (GMT 0)
     My doctor always prefers a 10 mgm per week taper but the last time I was on prednisone (on it for seven months...ugh), I went from 10 to 5 to 2.5.
Posted 5/5/2009 9:16 PM (GMT 0)
I tapered off prednisolone from 60mg and went down to 40mg, 30mg, 20mg, 15mg, 10mg, 5mg and then off. Although I felt abit shakey after coming off it quickly so I would highly suggest you do as your doctor instructs you to, also.

Hope you don't have any problems :)
Posted 5/6/2009 1:10 AM (GMT 0)
I have only done it once and followed doctor's orders, but I would agree with those who say to follow the doc's advice on this. As much as I wanted to just get off of that horrible wicked stuff, my biggest fear about tapering too fast (and I definitely considered taking matters into my own hands on this) was that I would have a flare up or go into renal distress and have to go back to the high dosage. I was willing to take it slowly so that I could get off of it for good.

I know in our Humira trial, there were a couple of people who didn't tolerate the taper well and ended up having to re-up the dosages. To me personally, it just isn't worth that.

(I tapered from 40 to 35, 30, 25, 20, 17.5, 15, 12.5, 10, 7.5, 5, 2.5, 0-it sucked, but I didn't have any issues with it-well, that isn't completely true. I lost almost half of my hair and had INTENSE paranoia during that time)

Good luck, whatever you decide!
Posted 5/6/2009 1:19 AM (GMT 0)
My GI told me that our body makes about 7.5mg of pred a day naturally....when taking pred orally the body stops making it....so once you reach the 10mg threshold, you have to taper slowly so your adrenal gland can start producing it again....
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